New York Media Interested in Special Mussel Watch Studies Performed to Determine the Effects of the Collapse of the World Trade Center

NOAA’s Mussel Watch Project findings about the amount of contaminants entering the Hudson-Raritan Estuary as a result of the attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) were published in Marine Pollution Bulletin and described in a press release, which was subsequently highlighted on the NOAA webpage. There has been renewed interest in the long-term consequences of contaminants released due to the collapse, and reporters from WNYC’s National Public Radio and the New York Daily News contacted National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science scientists with follow-up questions. They both asked similar questions about why polychlorinated biphenyls and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons have not increased in either sediments or mussels after the attack on the WTC (the background levels were already high). One interviewer was also interested in whether NOAA would continue the Mussel Watch monitoring effort, which had been monitoring the Hudson-Raritan Estuary for over a decade prior to 9/11/01. NOAA will continue to do so, including monitoring the site closest to “ground zero” at the Statute of Liberty.